Utilitarianism and Autism

This is a crosspost from my substack.

Effective altruism has received a lot of media attention since the Department of War CTO of the United States declared that there follow “Americanism, NOT Effective Altruism.” One of the main critiques of effective altruists is to accuse them of being utilitarians. It’s an especially tiring criticism, especially from other academics, who should know better than to spread disinformation. As one of the founders of the movement put it:

“Many take effective altruism to be synonymous with utilitarianism, the normative theory according to which an act is right if and only if it produces no less well‐being than any available act. This is a category mistake. Effective altruism is not utilitarianism, nor is it any other normative theory or claim. Instead, effective altruism is the project of using evidence and reason to try to find out how to do the most good, and on this basis trying to do the most good” - William MacAskill and Theron Pummer

Ironically, one of the main reasons I’ve been reluctant to call myself an EA (instead of say EA-adjacent) is that I am a utilitarian, and I wish EAs would be much more utilitarian. But amid all the justified counters by EAs emphasizing that they are not utilitarians, I think it is time to defend utilitarianism itself and call out the shameful criticisms of utilitarianism I’ve seen in recent weeks, lest it be assumed they are good ones or valid.

The Quillette founder Claire Lehmann, for instance, seems to have gone down an anti-EA rabbit hole in the last two weeks, trying to come up with any justifications she can find to reject the arguments made by effective altruists without having to engage with them, resulting in a series of ad hominem attacks and other logical fallacies. Fellow Substack philosopher and utilitarian Bentham's Bulldog recently got into a back-and-forth with Lehmann about her dismissal of AI safety research, that I won’t repeat here, but see his excellent blog post.

But what stood out to me, as a philosopher on the autism spectrum, was a recent tweet in which she tried to dunk on utilitarianism by shaming Jeremy Bentham for plausibly being autistic. Now that strikes me as shameful in itself, using the autistic lifestyle and mindset of a philosopher to disregard their views.

That Bentham thought the mind is a machine or that he tried to systematize the law are hardly objections of course. These are mainstream positions. Claire Lehmann promptly responded by unfollowing me and insisting that Bentham really was autistic, as if that was the reason I challenged her a tweet.

I found that quite disappointing given Lehmann’s professed motto of Quillette to be guided by “reason, science, and humanism as our guiding values.” Refuting one of the most influential ethical theories by shaming its founder for being autistic is not reasoned, scientific, or humanistic.

I’d rather focus on the issue of why it seems justifiable for a major public figure to call a view into question on the grounds that its proponents are autistic, but not, I take it, if they were Black, Asian, or members of some other minority. Effective altruists and utilitarians are frequently described as high-IQ and autistic, as if that were enough to tarnish their opinions.

Why is it not seen as obviously discriminatory to reject a view based on the neurodiversity of those who hold it?

The obvious answer one can give at this point is that there is no causal connection between one’s philosophical views and one’s ethnicity, but there are such connections when it comes to differences in brains or cognitive styles.

I am happy to grant this position. More than most, even. Indeed, in a module on the philosophy of psychology that I designed for the University of Reading, I’ve explicitly tied together research on psychological differences and how they influence one’s philosophical views, such as aphantasia and high and low decoupling, alongside many other dimensions along which human minds vary.

Much like surrounding culture of philosophers will influence the views of philosophers, such as the Prussian culture which is reflected in Kant’s philosophy, so we can see differences in minds reflect different philosophical outlooks. The perhaps most obvious case here is Derek Parfit, who unfortunately also received dismissals of his views based on his peculiar lifestyle and possible autism.

I will note, that no one would dare to question scientific results if it turned out that the scientists behind them turned out to be autistic. If anything, people would probably be more likely to think that their results are accurate. If one wants to seriously Lehmann’s charge that we should evaluate views based on who hold them, than the increased probability of autistic folks is actually good evidence that autism is right. For there is now ample scientific data to support the view that high-functioning autistics are better reasoners, less likely to cognitive biases, and less likely to just adhere to the current ‘common sense’ of their culture.

Why should we hold a different view when it comes to philosophy? Or ethics? Rejecting the theories of autistics because they are autistic is a clear example of epistemic injustice. You’ll meet few people, other than autistics, who are so wholly dedicated to their craft that they dedicate their entire life to it, at the sacrifice of much else. In the same article Lehnmann cites, Bentham is reported to be a workaholic:

On many occasions in his later life he referred to himself as a hermit, and when he could he buried himself in “colleges, chambers, and cottages”. Even when he visited his brother in a fairly remote part of Russia, he went off to live in an even more remote cottage where, secure from all interruption, he could work “double tides” from sunrise until eight each evening. On return to England, both before and after he inherited his father’s large, central, house, he buried himself for long periods in a room in a dilapidated farm at Hendon, eight miles from London.

That Bentham only “listens to facts” is a mantra everyone could learn from. Utilitarians were among the first animal rights, women’s rights, and gay rights campaigners, as well as campaigners for the abolition of slavery. To show that they are wrong will take more than lazy smears or appeals to “common sense.” For the very ideas of abolishing slavery, ending animal cruelty, and opposing the oppression of women and gays were once seen as highly counterintuitive.

Taking a picture with Bentham’s Auto-Icon

Like Bentham, I, too, am fond of largely staying inside, in my armchair, and researching and writing all day. As a radical naturalist with a blog, I, too, may well be described as liking to talk a lot and listening to nothing but facts. Intuitions and common sense mean nothing to me. When I read about Bentham’s idosyncratic lifestyle I only felt closer to him, which no doubt was the opposite result Lehmann intended.

But Bentham, unlike others, did not disparage others for what they derive pleasure from. He was a liberal who encouraged everyone to seek the life that brings them (and others) enjoyment as long as it didn’t bring suffering to others. The world would be a happier and more tolerant place if we could all learn to be a bit more like Jeremy Bentham and appreciate the contributions of neurodiverse folks questioning “common sense.”

Let me end with a wonderful passage from Bentham himself:

One man says, he has a thing made on purpose to tell him what is right and what is wrong; and that it is called a moral sense: and then he goes to work at his ease, and says, such a thing is right, and such a thing is wrong—why? “because my moral sense tells me it is”.

Another man comes and alters the phrase: leaving out moral, and putting in common, in the room of it. He then tells you, that his common sense teaches him what is right and wrong, as surely as the other’s moral sense did: meaning by common sense, a sense of some kind or other, which he says, is possessed by all mankind: the sense of those, whose sense is not the same as the author’s, being struck out of the account as not worth taking.

This contrivance does better than the other, for a moral sense being a new thing, a man may feel about him a good while without being able to find it out: but common sense is as old as the creation, and there is no man but would be ashamed to be thought not to have as much of it as his neighbours. It has another great advantage: by appearing to share power, it lessens envy: for when a man gets up upon this ground, in order to anathematize those who differ from him, it is not by a sic volo sic jubeo, but by a velitis jubeatis.